The main work of your hip flexors is to bring your knee toward your chest and to bend at the waist. Symptoms associated with a hip flexor strain can range from mild to severe and can impact your mobility. If you don’t rest and seek treatment, your hip flexor strain symptoms could get worse. But there are many at-home activities and remedies that can help reduce hip flexor strain symptoms.

While each muscle functions slightly differently, their overall combination allow them to flex the hip joint, anteriorly rotate the pelvis, and extend the lumbar spine. Due to its’ attachment on the vertebral bodies of the lumbar spine, the psoas also plays an important role in lumbar spine stabilization (1), an often forgotten function of this muscle.
Hey Sunny! I’m so sorry you’ve been experience hip pain since your C-section! I hope these help! :) I actually have an exercise program to help women recover properly from C-sections (mainly rebuilding their core and pelvic floor) if that sounds like something you might be interested in, let me know! I’m wondering if we could get your strength balanced some of that hip pain would go away? Thanks so much for your comment!
How to: Lie on your back with your right knee bent and foot flat on the floor (a). With your left leg fully extended, press into your right foot to shift onto your left hip. This is your starting position (b). Then, squeeze your right glutes to press your left hip open until you feel a stretch, pause, then return to start. That’s one rep (c). Perform six to eight reps, then repeat on the opposite side.

Fun fact: I was hoping I could rename this because I have a phobia of butterflies. But.. I want you to be able to easily recognize this gym class favorite, so here we are. When it comes to hip flexor stretches, this is hands-down the most embarrassing for me- your knees should be much lower to the ground than mine, but that takes time. Work in progress, friends.

I like to think of myself as a powerful, modern Highland warrior, or maybe a Viking. Had I been born 1,100 years ago I would have leapt first off the longboat to battle hundreds of enemies with a giant axe, or so the fantasy goes. But, it didn't take strength coach Matt Wattles long to put a pin in that balloon. All he had to do was ask me to raise my toes all the way up to his hands, and in an instant, I felt like a senior citizen with a hip replacement. That movement was hard.
For example, your quadriceps muscles are a group of four that are located at the front of the thigh; one of the group members, the rectus femoris flexes the hip, which brings your lower extremity (thigh, lower leg, and foot) forward, in front of you. On the other hand, your hamstring muscles are located at the back of the thigh. When they contract, they extend the lower extremity, bringing it behind you.
If you’re lucky, you won’t notice your hips are tight until you’re trying to do the Half Pigeon pose in your yoga class. But if you’re not so fortunate, your tight hips are making themselves known every time you so much as walk to the bathroom or sit on the couch—expressing themselves in the form of lower back pain and muscle stiffness. Tight hips can even shorten your stride, slowing your 5K goal time!
Weak glute (or buttocks) muscles also contribute to tight hip flexors. Unfortunately, it’s a self-perpetuating problem, since tight hip flexors can cause weak glutes. Strengthening the glute muscles—which often don’t get as much exercise as other key running muscles such as the hamstrings, quads, and calves—is an effective way to relieve stress on the hip flexors.
Putting the exercise in writing do not help me, I need to watch them doing them so, I can figer out how to do them, or if I should even try to do them. I use the flex extendors, lifting my legs one at a time from the flor to strengthen my thys, hip and buttox. And I try to remember to do the bridge excerise. I have had 2 total hip replacements , 7 months a part, in 2013. Trying to get stronger with cold weather will be 70 in Feb. Linda
Take a step back and think about where you spend most of your day. If you're a young athlete, you probably spend most of your time at school or maybe work or practice and even a little time at home, if you're lucky. Now think about what position your body is in during those periods. I would bet that you spend most of your day sitting down. You may walk to class or run in practice, but the majority of your day is spent in a seated position.
Holland also suggests doing strength work in different planes of motion to keep all the muscles in and around your hip flexors, especially your glutes, firing correctly.“You can’t have good hip flexion if your glutes are tight or weak,” Nurse says, “so it’s super important that you’re always stretching and strengthening the front of your hip flexor and the back, which are the glute muscles.”

The hip is a very stable ball and socket type joint with an inherently large range of motion. The hip contains some of the largest muscle in the body as well as some of the smallest. Most people lack mobility due to a relatively sedentary lifestyle. Periods of prolonged sitting results in tightness of the hip flexors and hamstrings. Tightness in the muscles and ligaments can created joint forces that result in arthritis, postural problems, bursitis, and mechanical back pain.

The tensor fascia lata (TFL), quadriceps, and sartorius muscles comprise what I call the big three hip flexors. These muscles are often overlooked in rehabilitation with more focus placed on a fourth hip flexor, the iliopsoas. In my opinion, though, these three hip flexors cause much more damage due to their size, the fact that they alter pelvic and knee mechanics, and their involvement in just about everything we do with our legs.
Our hip flexors serve many vital functions. The goal of the hip flexor is to make it easy to for joints to move through their full range of motion smoothly. They’re responsible for important aspects of motion, like our ability to bend, run, or kick. Without our hip flexors, controlling the movement of our legs would be virtually impossible. Our hip flexors also work to stabilize the joints of the hips and lower body.
Weak glute (or buttocks) muscles also contribute to tight hip flexors. Unfortunately, it’s a self-perpetuating problem, since tight hip flexors can cause weak glutes. Strengthening the glute muscles—which often don’t get as much exercise as other key running muscles such as the hamstrings, quads, and calves—is an effective way to relieve stress on the hip flexors.

Grade II (moderate): A larger tear in your muscle that makes it difficult to move and causes a moderate amount of pain, especially when you move the affected muscle, swelling, and tenderness. You may have 5 percent to 50 percent loss of function and you may be limping. You can't go back to sporting activities until the tear is completely healed. These injuries can take anywhere from a couple weeks to a few months to heal, depending on how bad they are.

The better you understand anatomy and biomechanics the more effectively you can program exercise for clients who need correction and/or to restore balance between the right and left sides of the body. There are 11 muscles that flex the hip joint. Each of these muscles also has other abilities for movement. For example, tensor fasciae latae also internally rotates the hip and abducts it. Whereas sartorius abducts but externally rotates the hip. The muscles in the human body all overlap each other in their abilities, making it the machine of many movements that it is.

Tight hip flexors occur for a variety of reasons. Those who run frequently or engage in other activities that put strain on the hip flexors are likely to experience hip flexor tightness at one time or another. A blow to the hip or poor conditioning can also be causes of tight hip flexors. These causes can usually be attributed to tiny tears that occur to our hip flexors through rigorous activity.

The good news is that there are plenty of good hip stretches out there that you can do to relieve discomfort, decrease tightness, and increase mobility in your hips. Since your hips are involved in so many of the movements you make (both inside and outside of the gym) stretching them is a great way to keep them feeling good and ready to work for you. Add some of the 12 hip stretches Atkins demos below to the end of your workout, or spend 10 minutes each day just doing a few of them, to improve mobility in your hips.